PETITION DELIVERY: On Thursday March 29th @ 11am at Village Voice HQ in NYC, three NYC City Council Members, 20 Faith Leaders, and 75 Community Members delivered nearly a quarter of a million petitions to the Village Voice calling on them to shut down the adult section of Backpage.com.

Sex trafficking of girls and boys on Backpage.com, owned by Village Voice Media, is becoming a disturbing trend.

A Georgia man was arrested for pimping two 17-year-old girls around the Nashville area. Detectives responded to a suspicious ad on Backpage.com and drove to a motel. There, they found the teens and their 37-year-old pimp, as well as a laptop computer, likely used for the online advertising. Just four days prior to that, four people in Denver were arrested for forcing a teen girl into prostitution. They also advertised her sexual services, including semi-nude pictures, on Backpage. And last year, a South Dakota couple was arrested for selling underage girls for sex on .... wait for it ... Backpage.com yet again.

Village Voice Media has a moral responsibility to ensure that young girls and boys aren't being abused in the commercial sex industry with help from their website.

Now, a rising movement of people of many faiths and backgrounds, motivated by their shared moral convictions, are taking action to end this practice.

Please join us in demanding that Village Voice Media - Backpage.com's parent company - stop selling ads that others use to sell minors on Backpage.com by shutting down the Adult section of the website.

This petition was delivered to:

CEO of Village Voice MediaJim Larkin

Board of Directors, Village Voice MediaBoard of Directors

Letter to

CEO of Village Voice MediaJim Larkin

Board of Directors, Village Voice MediaBoard of Directors

Please shut down the Adult section on Backpage.com and stop providing a means for others to sell girls and boys for sex.

By Village Voice Media's own admission, additional safeguards are unlikely to entirely end the practice of minors being sold on the site. For us, one child sold for sex is one too many.